GP surgeries shut during office hours

ALMOST half of all GP surgeries shut during working hours, a committee of MPs has found, as they warned the Government had no “credible plan” to employ enough doctors.

The Public Accounts Committee report also found that two in five GP services close by 3pm on some days in parts of England.

The cross-party group of MPs demanded that NHS England comes up with a plan by September for how to keep practices open during core hours.

NHS England does not collect data on availability of appointments during these hours, the MPs found. The report said: “Without this information, it cannot know whether practices are offering appointments during core hours to suit working people, such as between 8 and 9am and between 5.30 and 6.30pm.

“Yet it is pressing ahead with plans to extend access in the evenings and at weekends to meet the needs of this working population.”

The MPs added: “The cost of providing these new arrangements would be 50 per cent higher than core hours if clinical commissioning groups were to simply provide the minimum requirements set out by NHS England.”

The report found that some 46 per cent of practices closed at some point during the core hours of 8am to 6.30pm on weekdays, including 18 per cent that closed by 3pm on at least one afternoon a week. In some areas, more than two in five of practices closed by 3pm, forcing more patients to turn to hospitals.

Last month, Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, said he would cut funding for practices that had half-day closing.

The report said there had been “no progress” in the past year on increasing GP numbers, despite a government target to recruit 5,000 more by 2020. It said Health Education England “still lacks a credible plan for ensuring that there are enough GPs”.

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair- man of the Royal College of GPs, said it was not that case that “just because face-to-face surgeries might not be taking place, patient care isn’t being delivered via telephone or online consultations, or by GPs making home visits – and when a practice is temporarily closed, adequate cover arrangements will be put in place”.

A Conservative spokesman said that Theresa May, the Prime Minister, “has been clear she wants to see extended opening hours across the country”.

Meg Hillier, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “It would be far more sensible in the short term if ministers ensured that GPs opened for the entire working day.”